Why is .gov only for US government agencies?

Mon Oct 20 22:26:26 UTC 2014

On 10/19/14 5:05 AM, Matthew Petach wrote:
> Wondering if some of the long-time list members
> can shed some light on the question--why is the
> .gov top level domain only for use by US
> government agencies?  Where do other world
> powers put their government agency domains?

... I think these questions have been adequately answered.

In regards to the question of "Ok, so what do we do about it?" a simple 
plan was floated oh, about a decade ago:

1. Create edu.us, gov.us, and mil.us

2. Lock out all new registrations in EDU, GOV, and MIL

3. Set a target date for the removal of those TLDs for 10 years in the 
future

Obviously there are various implementation details for effecting the 
move, but application-layer stuff will be as obvious to most readers as 
it is off-topic for this list.

Regarding the time period in #3, decommissioning a TLD is harder than 
you might think, and we have plenty of extant examples of others that 
have taken longer, and/or haven't finished yet *cough*su*cough*.

Obviously no serious consideration was given to that plan 10 years ago, 
or we wouldn't still be having the conversation today. :)  Meanwhile 
what most perceive as the USG's privileged position in the operation of 
the root zone is still being reinforced by those TLDs, in spite of the 
current IANA stewardship transition talks.

Doug